Advance file photoJohn Galtieri is placed in a police car after being arraigned in his ex-wife's murder in 2007.

A retired cop on trial for allegedly gunning down his ex-wife at a park-and-ride in the Pleasant Plains section of Staten Island "joked" about wanting to shoot his former spouse in conversations with a co-worker at a Florida restaurant, according to testimony today.

John Galtieri said "'I'd like to kill the [bleep]," Angela Peikidis, 32, recalled from conversations in late 2006 when the pair worked at Quizno's in Punta Gorda, Fla., where Galtieri moved following his messy divorce from Jeanne Kane in 2003.

Ms. Peikidis said Galtieri, who worked as a manager at the Quizno's, made the remarks in the context of "joking" banter during work hours in the back kitchen.

But the former Quizno's food server maintained that Galtieri never hid his bitterness over the divorce settlement in which a New Jersey judge awarded Ms. Kane $400,000 in alimony and all but $7 of his monthly $2,770 police pension checks.

"He didn't say nice things," Ms. Peikidis said, noting that Galtieri brought up his ex-wife "maybe a couple of times a week" in conversation.

"He talked about how she was taking all his money," she recounted. "He said she killed his dog. He said he'd like to shoot her. He said that ... at least between three and five times."

Galtieri, 63, a former NYPD sergeant, is on trial charged with murdering Ms. Kane as she sat in her car waiting to pick up her daughter at a Pleasant Plains park-and-ride Jan. 30, 2007.

If convicted of the top count of second-degree murder, Galtieri, who retired from the NYPD in 1980, could face up to 25 years to life in prison.

The trial resumes tomorrow morning at state Supreme Court, St. George, in front of Justice Stephen J. Rooney.